Mart's Ramblings October 2024

I’m writing this month’s Ramblings on a high the day after our first ever BPW Weekender festival.  I had the idea for this event a couple of years ago, the concept was really simple, a weekend long festival to celebrate everything that is great about mountain biking, BikePark Wales, our trails, customers, partner brands and friends of the park.  It takes a huge amount of work to pull off an event like this and I have to give a huge shout to the whole BPW team who went above and beyond to deliver an incredible event, but also for bringing huge positive vibes all weekend. 

We tried loads of new stuff and definitely introduced some new disciplines to BPW!  Hot Seat racing was a massive hit (thanks to our friends at Rogate for sharing this with us) and will for sure be back in the future, I took part in the Shralp-off and threw some Dad whips in the whip-off event on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed myself.  When you have Rob Warner commentating on your own little moment in mountain biking what’s not to love?!  We hosted a variety of talks covering everything from MTB Fitness with Strength Factory to Yoga sessions, how to build trails and interviews with MTB legends Tracy Mosely, Rob Warner and Jono Jones.

I think I’ve waxed lyrical enough about what we did at the event, it was what YOU did that really made it special.  We had 1,000 riders at the event over the weekend and you ALL brought such positivity, you got stuck in with the events, you asked brilliant questions during the Q&A sessions and most importantly you brought great vibes and loads of smiles.  Our team love working events like this, the atmosphere is electric and it’s you guys that bring that, so from the bottom of my heart a huge thank you.  Our partner brands also enjoyed their conversations with you, and all commented on how great it was to have time and space to engage with such a knowledgeable audience in a relaxed environment.

Central Beacons Mountain Rescue have asked us to pass on their sincere thanks as we (you!) raised just shy of £2,000 for them in the raffle event.  These guys are entirely funded by donations and do incredible work for outdoor enthusiasts across our region so events like this are so important, great work everyone!

I think it’s fair to say The Weekender will be back next year, we will bring some freshness, but also keep some of what made this year’s event special, we hope to see you there.

Before I sign off it would be rude not to give you a bit of a heads up on what’s going on here and what’s coming up soon!  You’ve probably noticed we’ve been working on a skills area in the quarry by Popty Ping.  The trail crew have, as always, done an incredible job and they’ve created a skills area that has everything you would expect (jumps, drops, rollers, skinnies) plus a really unique and amazing freeride zone with very steep and technical bedrock steeps and drops, we’ve even snuck a pro line in there.  The work is now complete on this latest addition, and we are in the hands of the weather gods as the freshly built jumps are currently saturated and are unrideable, please stay off until we are ready to pop the cork, riding trails before they have settled always delays their opening.  Rest assured we will open the skills area as soon as we can, keep an eye on our newsletter and social media for more news.

Finally, Franco has just started work on lower Boomslang. This is going to be an amazing addition, it’ll be built in a similar vein to the lower half of upper Boomslang, predominantly hand built, technical, natural and lots of fun.  This is a pretty big build so will take some time, but we will keep you posted and aim to have the trail open to ride at some point this winter.

 

Thanks everyone

Martin